52 Egypt
with which it had no real racial or regional relationship,
Egypt, in fact, became an empire before it became a
nation.
But Mehemet Ali's principal ambition was the
Napoleonic policy of using Egypt as a stepping-stone
to the Ottoman Empire. It was expansion towards the
north that drew him most irresistibly. There were two
roads leading north to. Constantinople—one the sea road
by the ^Egean, the other the land road by Anatolia. # He
therefore responded readily enough to Mahmoud's re-
quest for help against the Greeks, who were fighting
their way to independence through insurrection. For
the combined naval and military operations necessary
against the Greeks, the Egyptian forces and fleet were
far more effective than the half-remodelled and wholly
unreliable Ottoman army and navy. Crete was subdued
without difficulty (1823). Ibrahim's first invasion of the
Morea (1824) failed, but the second (1825) broke the
back of the insurrection, and in the following year a fresh
expedition was prepared to finish the insurrection in this
last stronghold at Missolonghi, After a long siege the
town capitulated, the garrison cut its way out, and the
townsfolk were massacred. All seemed over when sud-
denly the Morea rose again behind Ibrahim. The Turks
and Egyptians fell out, the Turks being commanded by
Khosrew, Mehemet Ali's old enemy. The British fleet
began to express the resentment of an aristocracy whose
education had not excluded Greece, and whose emotions
had been excited by Lord Byron. Therefore, when
Ibrahim began to apply to Greece the policy of extermin-
ation that had crushed Arabia and the Sudan, he found
himself encountering a sentiment that had the means
to make itself felt. Moreover, British religious feeling,
that was only mildly disturbed by the wholesale destnio